“€¢ Two “€œteens,”€ AKA “€œyouths,”€ AKA “€œyoung men with suspiciously black-sounding names,”€ were arrested on Staten Island and charged with breaking into a Rent-A-Center.

“€¢ Thieves in South Brooklyn tore through a Mega Aid Pharmacy and reportedly purloined thousands of prescription pills.

“€¢ Four men in Manhattan were arrested and charged with stealing thirty pairs of high-tech, luxury, ridiculously overpriced designer sneakers estimated to be worth an average of $1,000 a pair.

There are also reports of criminals dressed as Long Island Power Authority workers, Con Edison workers, and Red Cross volunteers, knocking on doors under cover of darkness and then robbing unsuspecting residents who permit them entrance.

With reports that the NYPD is being “€œstretched“€ beyond its capacity to defend the public and that an inept FEMA has proved incapable of so much as providing thirsty citizens with bottled water, it’s somewhat heartening to see that many New Yorkers were unwilling to curl up into fetal balls and allow the government to save them. Residents in Queens and Brooklyn are arming themselves with guns, machetes, baseball bats, and the occasional bow and arrow to fend off assailants who capitalized on the darkness, cold weather, and lack of police support. In view of the fact that an ever-encroaching federal colossus has for decades been methodically sapping personal sovereignty and self-sufficiency away from its subjects, I find a perhaps naïve degree of comfort in the fact that some citizens are seizing the power back into their own hands, where it has always belonged.

I find it especially poignant in a climate where the feds have maligned the so-called “€œpreppers”€ as paranoid misfits or even terrorists. And it’s hard to feel much sympathy for the unprepared”€”the “€œun-preppers,”€ if you will”€”who are too stupid, lazy, disorganized, dependent, or stoned to have planned ahead for any such contingencies.

I”€™m typing this from beautiful Forsyth County, GA, The County That Was Too White For Oprah. And though many view the past few days”€™ events as merely the wake of Hurricane Sandy, I see it more as a wake before a funeral. It feels much safer up here in the mountains, far way from the crowded, dirty, low-lying coastal areas that scoff at quaint notions such as individual freedom and gun rights. Right now these oft-maligned Southern hills are looking like an awfully nice place to live, at least compared to the festering trash dump that is Staten Island”€”but then again, nearly everywhere on Earth looks better than Staten Island.

Maybe things will get better in this country, but I ain”€™t feelin”€™ it. If your instincts align with mine”€”and if you can stand being mocked by sneering urban pundits who for the moment are protected within bubbles that may be doomed to burst very soon”€”I”€™d suggest you gather your food, water, bullets, and gasoline, then head for higher ground.